At Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing — entitled “Coercive Interrogation Techniques: Do They Work, Are They Reliable, and What Did the FBI Know About Them?” — former FBI interrogator John E. Cloonan raised some important questions — questions the press should be asking, as well as the senators.
From his opening comments:

There are 3 questions I would like this committee to ponder. Has the use of coercive interrogation techniques lessened Al Qaeda’s thirst for revenge against the US? Have these methods helped to recruit a new generation of jihadist martyrs? Has the use of coercive interrogation produced the reliable information its proponents claim for it? I would suggest that the answers are “no”, “yes” and “no”.

Based on my experience in talking to al Qaeda members, I am persuaded that revenge, in the form of a catastrophic attack on the homeland, is coming, that a new generation of jihadist martyrs, motivated in part by the images from Abu Ghraib, is, as we speak, planning to kill American and that nothing gleaned from the use of coercive interrogation techniques will be of any significant use in the forestalling this calamitous eventuality.

Torture degrades our image abroad and complicates our working relationships with foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies. If I were the director of marketing for al Qaeda and intent on replenishing the ranks of jihadists. I know what my first piece of marketing collateral would be. It would be a blast e-mail with an attachment. The attachment would contain a picture of Private [Lynddie] England pointing at the stacked, naked bodies of the detainees at Abu Ghraib. The picture screams out for revenge and the day of reckoning will come. The consequences of coercive intelligence gathering will not evaporate with time.

As I wrote in an October item for NiemanWatchdog.org, Real plots or false confessions?, Bush administration officials have yet to provide a shred of proof to support their argument that the CIA’s interrogation program saved American lives — and yet they repeat that assertion over and over again, and reporters print it without a disclaimer.